Thursday, September 8, 2011

Call me "Double" D

With 2/3rds of the year complete I thought it would be interesting to look at how my mileage was spread out over the course of a day. I've been lucky to have only a couple of minor injuries this year. I missed 7 days in January with a back issue and my only other day off was due to a migraine in March. The calf injury in June caused me to lower my mileage and miss over a month of racing but it didn't keep me from running (slowly).

So, for the this list I've considered a "Single" any time I only ran once in a day. I did not count a warm-up or warm-down (before and after a race or workout) as additional runs since they are more of a continuation of a run with a short break to change shoes or such. Slightly more than a quarter of my days were "Single". I pretty much run twice a day every work day so the 53% of days with "Double" isn't a surprise. I enjoy running three times a day (Triple), there is something very satisfying about having a run in before 5 am. What a great way to kick off the day! It is a heck of a lot easier to run at 4 am in the summer with moderate temperatures, so the increase in June, July and August is also no big surprise. To me at least, the biggest surprise is that I've only got two days with more than 3 runs. I had a five run day and a six run day, both of which had to do with peakbagging where I'd go to various mountains and run to the top. I had a lot more of these type of days a couple of years ago and especially when I was completing the list of running in every town in Massachusetts. My highest mileage in a day has been 20 miles and my highest single run has been 13 miles (once) and 12 miles (twice). A typical weekday for me is a 5 mile run in the morning, a 4 mile run at lunch and a 6 mile run in the afternoon.

I wouldn't say that doubles or triples are a good idea for anyone else but I think they work very well for me. I get additional mileage and I can run my miles faster, and most importantly I've been able to stay reasonably healthy. Time to head out for a run! :-)